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When I learned Scranton’s only freestanding wine bar closed, I was at a trade event in France for Loire wines, unable to mourn with others on Dionysus Wine Bar’s final nights.

In the press room at the Salon des Vins de Loire, wine writers from nations with a

M.J. Dougherty: great idea, wrong state.

history of royalty, fascism, and communism, could hear me curse the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.

Dionysus Wine Bar combined sleek modernity and coziness. But most importantly, it approached wine seriously. The bar ran off the passion of proprietor M.J. Dougherty. Despite his youth, he had a wealth of knowledge and the gift of a good palate. I consider M.J. a friend.

As a local wine writer, I’m the comment department for all things wines, so I heard complaints of Dionysus’ limited selection and questions about the $7 per glass price. Dionysus didn’t have a wine dispensing/preservation system and I knew the M.J. ended up with waste at the end of the night as he resisted the common practice of serving opened red wines the next night, and the night after that. Wine margins were thin. Over time, Dionysus shifted to the more lucrative, quick-turning beer and spirits sales. Also, the young establishment found itself in the worst economy in generations.

A good time, good memories at Dionysus

At the heart of this whodunit – the phantom menace Dionysus’s biggest fans may not be aware of, is the state-run alcohol monopoly, the PLCB –which stacked the deck against this entrepreneur before the idea of opening a wine bar ever occurred to him. In fact, the PLCB’s onerous practices dampen the entire market for wine in bars and restaurants in Pennsylvania by making it a money loser rather than a money maker.

Here’s how. In freeAmerica, wine stores, restaurants and bars are middle men. They purchase wine at wholesale prices – typically 50 percent of retail price. Wine retailers typically double the price. A restaurant or wine bar sometimes as much as triples it, or nets at least that much in by-the-glass sales. In free states, profit on alcohol is much greater than that on food.

Not in Pennsylvania. Wine and spirit stores are owned and operated by the state government. They don’t want Pennsylvania citizens buying their wine from restaurants and bars, preferring they purchase from “state stores” so the system can capture the entire mark-up. So the state treats bars and restaurants as end users, just like consumers, essentially charging them full retail price for a bottle of wine. (They offer a mere 10 percent off full retail, dubbed the “licensee discount” as though they are doing licensees a favor. But sale prices consumers pay are often lower.)

This structure makes it nearly impossible for businesses to make a profit, or anywhere near the profit margin businesses outside of Pennsylvania earn for selling wine. Bottom line: Pennsylvania bars and restaurants have little incentive to sell wine.

Next time you are out, ask your Keystone State restauranteur how they get their wine and spirits delivered – because they don’t. They have to order it at a “state store” in advance, pray to Bacchus it comes in, then go to the state store and pick it up. In states with a free market, private distributors and their commissioned sales people drive through snow storms and deliver gift wrapped cases to restaurants and bars or risk an unhappy client. That’s how capitalism works, kids.

Why would someone build a business model around these low margins, the state’s limited selection, the inconvenience of dealing with a broken bureaucracy? I blame M.J.’s entrepreneurialism, hard work, and optimism for being in the wrong state.

As I grumbled through France, I shared the finer points of the PLCB with Richard Kelley, a U.K. importer and Master of Wine. He was familiar with Pennsylvania’s government-run system, but kept shaking his head in disbelief at my first-hand accounts.

David Falchek unscrambles the complex world of wine. Cutting through the uninteresting and uninspiring, David finds wines that over-deliver for the price or that offer something special. Firm in the belief that wine should an everyday drink for everyone, he loathes the word connoisseur and despises snobbery.

In addition to his weekly column that appears the Pennsylvania and New York publications, David's work has appeared in several wine magazines and he serves often as a wine judge. Based in Scranton, Pa., David is also a fan of non-West Coast wines with a particular affinity for those of Pennsylvania and New York.